


a history of holding (back)

by still_intrepid



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1800s, 1990s, Arguing, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Growing Up, Historical References, Kids, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Middle Ages, Reconciliation, hugged the wrong person from behind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 18:21:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3218816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_intrepid/pseuds/still_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, Two times Poland glomped Lithuania by Accident and one time it was definitely on Purpose; and some Angst. </p><p>Moments in time and in contact through the centuries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a history of holding (back)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [that_dark_haired_perv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/that_dark_haired_perv/gifts).



> LietPol Secret Santa fic for Fillie (that-dark-haired-perv)!
> 
> My prompt was “hugged the wrong person from behind”. Which… is where the fic starts, with young!Po and Liet. And then we zoooom through time, and… oh, you poor wonderful immortal silly children, it’ll be okay. Eventually.

Lithuania was at a loose end.  With the rest of the diplomatic party in talks with their Polish counterparts, the young nation was supposed to be furthering relations with Poland personally, in some unspecified way. But the strange boy was nowhere to be found.

So Lithuania wandered through the corridors, trying to interest himself in the heavy framed portraits and avoiding the eyes of servants, all of whom seemed to have interesting and important work to be getting on with.

 _“_ Hey, it’s  _you!”_

Before he had time to turn towards the voice, someone sprang upon Lithuania from behind. A pair of arms seized him around the chest, and his assailant squished their nose into the back of his neck, sighing happily.  

“You’re here, you’re here!!  I missed you so much.  Hey, you will not believe the day I’ve had, it was beyond crazy—”

Lithuania was so surprised and winded that he could hardly speak.

“P-Poland?” he squeaked.

“—and then I—what?”

Suddenly free, Lithuania turned around. 

“I thought you’d were someone else,” Poland said.

He wasn’t as tall as he’d looked earlier, seated serene and commanding on the royal throne.  His eyes were wide, round as moons. Expressions on his small face were extremely concentrated.

“Oh,” said Lithuania. He was unreasoningly disappointed.  “Well, of course, I suppose you must have.”

“I th-thought,” Poland said again, stammering as badly as if his teeth were chattering, “y-you were s-s-someone else…”

“It’s alright!  What’s the matter?  I’m not offended or anything, it was just a simple mistake…”

Poland’s face closed up tight, and he glared at the floor.

“I didn’t mind, really I didn’t.”  Lithuania remembered the unmoderated enthusiasm of the embrace, the affection in Poland’s voice, his face pressed so close.  If only any of it was actually meant for him. “You surprised me, that’s all.  Anyway, who did you think I was?”

“…thought you were Hungary,” Poland mumbled. “I guess I could sense you were a nation and stuff so I thought…  You’ve got, kinda, same kinda hair.”

“ _Hungary_?” Lithuania exclaimed incredulously, forgetting to be gentle. “What would Hungary be doing here?”

“Well, we’re friends!” Poland retorted, transferring his glare to Lithuania.  “What are  _you_  doing here??” 

“What am  _I_  doing here?”  Now Lithuania was offended.  He wasn’t  _that_ forgettable! “I’m here because our Duke is marrying your Queen. Like we just talked about, in the throne room, remember?”

“King.”

“—What?”

“Jadwiga’s title. King, not Queen.”

“Oh. Yes.”  They’d been through all that in preparation for the meeting. “I forgot, sorry.”

Pause.

“Well… you’d better remember it in future, that’s all.”  Poland nodded curtly, face tight and guarded again.  He tugged his fur-trimmed cloak closed around him.  “I’m going now.  Sorry about the ambush.”

“Wait!”

Poland turned slowly back, looking down.  

“Don’t go. They, um, they kind of abandoned me after the meeting.  I’ve been rattling around the hallways with the pictures giving me funny looks ever since.” 

Poland’s mouth twitched, just a little.

“Let’s talk?” Lithuania suggested.

“What shall we talk about?”

Every conversation topic in the world immediately evacuated Lithuania’s brain.

“Um, tell me about your King?” he asked after a moment’s frantic thought.

It was the right question. Poland brightened and looked up.

“Oh, she’s the best.  Seriously.  She’s so funny and smart, and she does these great voices. She’s like one of my best friends, best human ones anyway.”

“I can’t wait to meet her,” Lithuania said politely.  “And… maybe  _we_  can be friends, if this works out.”

“I guess,” Poland said, with a tiny smile that lit up his whole face.  “…Hey, so what’s your Duke like though? We were, I mean Jadwiga was, just a little bit I mean—but she’s so young, you can see how it would be scary for—“

“Were you worried about meeting me?”  

“What?  Oh, no!   Hardly any.”

“I don’t mean that you looked it!” Lithuania added quickly. “You didn’t.   _At all._   Duke Jogaila is pretty great too.  He might look very serious.  Actually, he is very serious.  But, he’s serious about  _this_.  The marriage, converting to Christianity, making this alliance.  Serious about you.  We all are.”

“Alright, good.  And he’s not… covered in hair all over, with the face of an otter?”

_“What?”_

“I guess our people will find out anyway,” Poland mused, unconcerned.  “They’re going to observe him having a bath to check, so.”

“You’re having me on.”

“Am not.”

“But _w_ _hy?_ ”

“Because of the monstrous hairiness, I just said!  And the, like… huge spiky genitals, heathen things like that.”

“What??”

“It’s better to be safe than sorry!”

“Because that’s not hideously offensive or pre-judging us in the least!”  But he was smiling at the absurdity of it.  “Uh.  Jogaila has a beard.  I’m pretty sure there’s nothing else to worry about.  So is that why you asked  _me_  to, um, disrobe, back there?”

“Did you see the looks on their faces?” Poland giggled.  “Priceless. Totally hypocritical, the whole bath thing was their idea!  Only thing that would have been even better is if you had…”

Poland looked carefully downwards again, but not at the floor.

“Oh my gods,” Lithuania exclaimed, going bright red, “ _what are you looking at?_ ” 

Poland smirked.  “…well, I can’t say ‘nothing’, can I? That’d  _really_  be offensive.”

“Haha. Um. Shall we continue this conversation somewhere not in the middle of the corridor?

“…Shall we continue this conversation about your vital regions somewhere more private? And you claim you’re  _not_  sex-obsessed deviants…”

“Um. No. Shall we… continue a different conversation entirely, somewhere else.”

“Yeeeah, go on then.  Hey, you wanna go see the gardens? I think they’re a bit famous.”

Poland, Lithuania realised, was trying to impress him.  It was a pleasant feeling, to have someone think you were worth impressing.

 

*

 

Lithuania was never afraid of heights.  Not even after what happened later, when Poland decided to really show off.

“And you’re  _sure_ you’ve done this before?”

“Course I’m sure!  Loads of times.  Anyway, didn’t I just prove how totally flexible and agile I am?”

“Uh… what does flexible have to do with it?”

Poland— _Po_ , Lithuania reminded himself—had perked up considerably during their time in the gardens.  He was now bouncing ahead of Lithuania, leading the way up a narrow spiral staircase.

“Climbers have to be flexible!” he called back, voice echoing around the stone walls.  “It’s obvious.  Here we are!”

They arrived, panting, at the top of the second tallest castle tower.

“Watch closely.”  

Poland climbed out of the window.

“I can’t… I can’t see you if you do that…” Lithuania said weakly, not terrified yet but quite sure he soon would be.  It would be different if  _he_  was doing the climbing.  He was quite keen to, in fact, sure his experience with trees and rock faces would translate well enough.  But of course, Poland was going first.  And Lithuania was concerned.

Poland’s head bobbed up above the sill again.  “I’m going to climb round on this ledge thing to that window!  Look out there!”

“Alright…”  

Lithuania stuck his head out of the other window, and a little while later saw Poland carefully making his way around the curve of the tower, mouth set in concentration.  

“You’re nearly there…” he called.

“I… know…” Poland panted, and inched along until he was under the window.  “Pretty awesome, huh?” he said, grinning up at Lithuania.  “Poland the Powerful does it again!”

He tried to push himself back up, and his foot slipped.  

Lithuania flung himself across the sill and grabbed one of Poland’s arms in both hands.  For a horrifying instant Poland hung in the air, legs kicking.  Then he grasped the windowsill with the other hand.  Lithuania leaned all his weight backwards.  

“Get… your foot… on a thing…” he gasped.

“I know… I am… I can’t push up anymore—I’m slipping, Liet,  _pull—_ ”

Lithuania pulled hard and Poland made a final effort, and suddenly he was scrambling through the window and falling forwards, knocking them both to the floor.

They lay there, dazed, for a moment.  Then Poland sprang to his feet with surprising alacrity. He stood a few yards away, hugging himself and shaking.

Lithuania got up more slowly.  “Are you alright?”

Poland nodded.  He was breathing heavily through his nose and his face was all screwed up.  Lithuania wanted to go over and give him a hug, but it would have been like hugging a temperamental siege catapult.  

“I wouldn’t have been killed, you know,” Poland said after a minute.  

“No,” Lithuania said reasonably, “you’d just have been all broken into bits.  Did you ever hear of anyone coming back from that?”

“Heh.”  Poland relaxed a little.  “I expect it’s possible!”  The light of scientific enquiry shone his eyes.  “I wonder…”

“Don’t!” 

“Well, alright.  Yeah, so, this is the tower… I think we’re done with climbing for today.”

“I think so too.”

They started to walk down the spiral staircase.

“So, can you tell me the story about the wolf again?  The climbing kind of put it out of my head…” 

Whatever else it was, Lithuania knew that living with Poland was not going to be boring.  When it was time for the Lithuanian delegation to head back to Vilnius to make their own preparations, he almost didn’t want to go. 

 

* * *

 

“Again with the rescuing me,” Poland murmured comfortably.  

They were too tired from the battle to talk much, but they shuffled their bedrolls close together and stared up at the canvas above, conversation flowing sluggishly between them.

“At least we had a plan this time,” Lithuania said. “All I did was follow it.”

“Just in time. It was pretty neat.”

“You make it sound like a story… it was a battle.”

“Eh, we won, right?  So it’s a story.”

“And you could’ve—“

“But I didn’t.  So it’s a happy ending!”

Lithuania sighed.  “I don’t get why you’re so sure about it being an ending at all.”

“And I don’t get why you worry so much. G’night, Liet. Thanks for totally saving my hide and everything.”

 

* * *

 

Not for the first time, Lithuania woke up in bed shivering.  Poland lay curled on the other side of the bed, wrapped in about nine-tenths of their blankets.  Lithuania grabbed at a corner and pulled.  Poland moaned and tightened his grip.

“Poland.  Poland I know you’re awake.  You’ve got all the blankets again.”

“…urgh… wha’…? Go backa sleep…”

“Poland! Blankets!”

Poland mumbled something incomprehensible.

“Seriously? You’re really doing this?” Lithuania tugged fruitlessly at the blankets again.

“You could go ‘nd find more blankets…”

“Poland, I’m cold.  Poland.”

“So’m I…”

Silence.

Lithuania sat up.  “Look, this isn’t working. If you’re going to keep being selfish like this, we can’t sleep in the same bed.”

“Yeah right,” Poland mumbled. “Bla bla… You’re always saying stuff like this… you’re not going anywhere.”

He rolled over and went back to sleep.

Morning came. Lithuania splashed his face with cold water. He surveyed the room, trying to decide which things in it belonged to him and which to Poland.

“Liet,” said Poland from the bed. “Liet, I’m sorry, alright? Last night… Liet, I was  _sleepy;_ don’t trust what the sleepy me says, he’s a dumbass.”

Lithuania didn’t reply.

“You’re not going to go sleep somewhere else for real, are you?  I’m not saying you can’t. I’m saying, please don’t? Don’t go, I’ll be all alone.”

Lithuania stared into the eyes of his own distorted reflection in the basin of water.  “I thought you liked being alone.” 

“Not from you,” Poland whispered.

Something stirred in Lithuania’s heart and was quickly subsumed by anger. “Then maybe you should’ve—” he started, and forced himself calm. “I don’t want to fight.  But we need to face up to our problems.   _I_   need to.”

“But, it’s just blankets and stuff?—and maybe I roll around and snore or whatever, yeah I can see how you’d want some space, but… but we’re alright, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know, Po.  There are quite a few things we need to sort out.”

Poland was silent for a long while. Lithuania didn’t dare look at him.  Then Poland said,

“Alright.  Yeah, I understand.  I’ll try, I’ll try and be better, and listen and stuff.  I know I always say that.  But you’ve got to talk to me, Liet.”

“Yes. I will.”

“We’ll work stuff out, we definitely will.  Look—if you want to stay in this room, I can move, whatever.”

Lithuania wanted so badly to back down, to stay in bed with Poland and sleep the morning away and pretend everything was fine.

“No,” he said. “Thanks for the offer, though, it’s thoughtful of you.” He looked around the room again. “I’m going to breakfast. I’ll see you later on.”

He left, trembling from head to toe. 

Poland stared after him, then flopped back down miserably and pulled the covers over his head.

 

* * *

 

_Poland—Poland!  Get up!  Get UP, please, I need your help.   He’s taking me away._

_Oh, God, Poland._

_Can you hear me?_

 

* * *

 

You couldn’t mooch around looking glum forever, just because your best friend had been murdered.  That’s what Russia said, almost in as many words.

Lithuania wasn’t mooching.  But he wasn’t alright.  He was walking through city streets, fast, because he had no destination.  But he was warm in the sun and alone in the crowd, and it was _such a pallid imitation of freedom_.  And it was almost enough to bring tears to his dazzled eyes.

That day, Poland mistook Lithuania for Hungary for the second time. And a dead man nearly gave a live one a heart attack.

He was quicker to realise his mistake this time.  He let go, and Lithuania dizzily turned around.

“Liet?” Poland breathed, his eyes round as moons again and his face just as pale.

He caught Lithuania under the arms in time to stop him shattering his kneecaps on the paving stones. His legs had given out beneath him.  Spots danced across his vision. 

“Come on,” Poland urged, “come on, we need to get out of the street, we’re making a scene—up you get, come on—”

“Making a scene?” Lithuania was laughing with the tears pouring down his cheeks. “Since when have you ever cared about that?”

“Since I became a person of interest to the authorities, and not in the good way—Liet, you need to  _walk_  here, I can’t… Oh, wow, you really are in a way, alright, lean on me…”

“Poland—”

“—yeah don’t lean that hard, you’re totally heavy, someone’s been eating up…”

Lithuania was thinner than he’d been since the years of famine.  Poland’s arm around him was little more than skin and bone.  

“Po.”

“Right, we can rest here. Sorry about the scenery.” Poland had pulled him into a shadowy alley behind a restaurant.  Faint clinks of silverware and glasses and shouts from the kitchen floated out.  He made a desultory attempt to brush a wooden palette clean of dirt, and helped Lithuania to sit down.  He crouched next to him, looking worried. “What’s up?”

Lithuania wiped his eyes and let out a shuddering sigh.  “ _What’s up_ ,” he croaked. “What’s up, when I haven’t seen you in years, not since he dragged me away from you, and I thought—I thought…”

After a moment, Poland’s voice, light, casual, filled in the painful silence.  “Hey, you’ll never guess what I thought though. I totally thought you were Hungary again.  Silly me.  It’s the gorgeous silky hair I guess.”

He hesitantly reached out to stroke a lock of Lithuania’s hair in his fingers.

“They said you were dead,” said Lithuania, and then he couldn’t stop. “They said they killed you.  They said it was  _messy_ —”

“Stop,” Poland interrupted him.  “I’m not.  It was.  I’m fine.”  His expression darkened into a scowl.  “He’s uh. Russia’s not around here somewhere, is he?  I don’t ‘specially want to run into—”

“No.  Meeting with Austria.  I had some time off, for a change.”

It wasn’t like Lithuania not to keep up with political affairs, including other people’s, as far as was possible. But after that morning, he’d needed to escape.

“Nice,” Poland said.  “Oi, budge up.”  He sat down on the palette beside Lithuania.

Of such disjointed, unfinished sentiment was their tender reunion made.

“I thought Hungary wore dresses these days anyway…?” Lithuania said.

“Mmm, most-times.”

“Do you live here now?”

Poland pulled a sour face.  “Ha, live, more like they keep—well, I  _stay_  here sometimes. I get to see Hungary at least.”  He patted Lithuania’s hand absently.  “And you remember that Italy Veneziano kid?  He’s sweet.  Oh Liet, I miss you like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I might,” Lithuania whispered.  “Is it as much as I miss you?”

“You sap,” Poland whispered back with a watery smile. “I can’t believe I got to meet you like this.”

Then Lithuania realised.  

“ _I didn’t sense you_.”  He grabbed Poland’s hands, and felt nothing.  It was incomprehensible, terrible. Poland might as well be an ordinary human.  “You’re, you’re—”

“I’m not dead,” Poland said, louder.  “Hey.  Hey, hey, Liet; no, calm down—breathe, alright?  Look at me being totally not dead.”

“But you’re not—”

“I don’t know exactly  _what_  I am at the moment.  And wow, way to rub it in, totally rude to bring up a guy’s potential mortality, or whatever. Point is, they told you I was dead and I’m super-not.”

“At the moment.”

“Drop it, Liet.”

“I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t. And I said to him.” He closed his eyes. “I told him, you  _couldn’t be dead_ , you… wouldn’t… die, not so long as I had anything to do with it.”

When he opened his eyes again, Poland was looking at him adoringly.  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said, oh my gosh.  Ha, I bet that pissed him right off.”

“He laughed.”

“Well, still.  Get you, standing up to Russia.”  Poland’s drawn face was aglow and Lithuania just couldn’t tell him the truth. How little he’d been able to stand up to Russia, how little good his attempts had done.  “I feel like no one’s on my side these days,” Poland went on, “’cept maybe France though like who even knows with that guy.  But you’re still here, you’re still with me, so that’s great!”

“Y-yeah.”  

“…you alright…?”  And without waiting for an answer: “It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”  He beamed, though his cheeks were almost too wasted for his old dimples.  “Now that we’re back together, it won’t be long and we’ll kick their butts all the way to Siberia.”

This was so typically Poland. No plan, no worries, just boundless blind optimism and innocent arrogance.  _How can we possibly fight? In what sense are we back together again, after one chance meeting?_

But.  A small and fast-growing part of Lithuania believed it, was more than willing to be wooed again by Poland’s madcap schemes and heartfelt, impossible promises. Would follow his bright smile into the depths.

“How long are you here?” Poland asked.

“We leave tomorrow.”

“Oh. Can you get out tonight?”

“Yes.” No. He’d be missed, and he’d pay for it later.  “Yes, what time?”

 

*

 

“ _There_  you are!” Poland greeted him. “Finally.  I was going to start throwing pebbles at your window.”  He pointed.

“…That’s Russia’s room.” 

“Oh.  Oh well maybe I should throw rocks then.”

“ _No_!”

“Spoilsport.”  Poland stuck his tongue out.  “Whatever, let’s go!”

“Where are we going?”

Poland’s eyes sparkled like the emerging stars.  “I want to go climb a thing.  You know, like we did back in Krakow.”

“You mean, when you nearly  _fell_ and—”

“—got broken into bits?  Imagine that.  What’s the worse that could happen?”  

Lithuania stopped walking.  “Don’t joke about that.”

“It’s my business.”

“Exactly!  This time, you’re not… you have so much more to lose if you fall.”

“Less.”

“More!!”  Lithuania shouted, not troubling to keep his voice down.  “You’re  _all that’s left_.”

This small and fragile body.

“Not true!”  Poland shook his head decisively.  “Not true at all.  Anyway, I won’t fall.  You’ll be with me.  And even if I do, you said it yourself:  _you_  won’t let me die.”

“ _I don’t want_ ,” Lithuania said through grit teeth, “to see you lying bleeding and broken on the ground another time, whether you’re _dead_  or not.  Do _not_ ask it of me.”

“…Alright,” Poland relented.  “We won’t climb the outside of anything or do anything dangerous.  We’ll go up a church tower or something.  I just want to be high up.”

“We won’t be able to get in this time of night…”

“Oh ye of little faith.  I have my ways.”

 

*

 

They looked out on the nocturnal cityscape.

“It’s beautiful,” Lithuania said.

Poland clenched and unclenched his hands on the parapet.  “Yeah.  And it used to be mine.  Ours, I mean.”

 _This place was never_ ours, Lithuania thought.   _You were never that good at sharing._

Aloud he said, “Don’t… don’t think about it like that.  It’ll just make you unhappy.”

“I do think like that!”  Poland stamped his foot.  “I think I have a right to be pretty unhappy round about now!”

“…I know.”

Poland shook his head and said nothing.

After a moment, Lithuania gently wrapped his arms around him.  “Hey.”

Poland leaned back against him and relaxed.  “Thanks.  I’m fine.  I mean, I’m _not_ , but…”

_I’m not fine either, but let’s not talk about me._

Lithuania repented his uncharitable thoughts, but couldn’t stop them.

He rested his chin on Poland’s shoulder and rocked them both back and forth for a minute.  

“Hey, Liet…”  Poland detached himself and gazed down over the edge.  “Do you ever just get sick of, like, everything?”

Shock coursed through Lithuania’s veins like ice.  “Poland—no—”

Poland turned, eyes brilliant with laughter and pain.  “Not that!  I mean.  If I were to say  _uprising_ … would you be game?”

Yes.

Yes, a thousand times yes.  

_I’d follow your bright smile into the depths._

 

* * *

 

_Poland shall not die, not as long as I have anything to do with it._

_But you don’t, Lithuania.  Haven’t we just established that?  What power have you?_

He gritted his teeth for the blow.

_As long as I’m alive, it’s my business.  I’m a part of him.  He’s half of me._

How long did he keep believing that? And how much longer did he tell himself that he did? 

At last, the illusion was broken once for all, and they were at each other’s throats.

 

* * *

  

“…Damn you, appreciate the favour I’m doing you here!”

God knew he didn’t  _want_  to be talking to Poland right now.  Except, he did.  

And  _everyone_  knew that Poland could stand to be taken down a peg or two.  But Lithuania didn’t want him getting hurt.  Not badly.  Not by anyone else.

The tinny quality of the ‘phone line only made that chirpy voice more infuriating.

_“It’s totally fine, I keep telling you, I’ve got it all taped out.  Hey, did I tell you about—”_

“You  _don’t_ , you only think you do! … Poland!  Poland, even if you don’t care about my safety, or my feelings—and you’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t—at least take some responsibility for your own!  Don’t you care about that?”

_“Yeah, sure.  Actually this will work, it’s all under control.  Okay, talk to you later!”_

Lithuania replaced the telephone in its cradle and put his head in his hands.  Poland didn’t have a clue what was coming!

(But then, as it transpired, no one did.) 

 

* * *

 

 _I did care.  About all of it.  A lot more than any of my so-called friends, it felt like, at the time. France and England that day.  What did they want me to do, beg?  We had an alliance, France; I needed you, I needed you badly and you say there was no_ spark _?_

_…Oh Lithuania. What could I possibly have said to you?_

_Well, we pay for our mistakes, and each other’s. We baptise rebirthed friendships in our tears. And some wounds do heal, and some reshape us in the healing._

_But what can you do? Just keep battling nightmare after nightmare.  With heart and hope and humour, strike out for the daylight and the new century._

 

* * *

 

There was no mistaken identity this time.  

“LIET!” Poland yelled as he cannoned into Lithuania’s back and flung his arms around him. 

“Oof!  Poland, what the—”

“I missed you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything. I missed you so much. Say you forgive me, Liet I can’t bear it, I’m not letting go until you do—“

“How  _dare_  you?” Lithuania said, low and distinct to make sure Poland understood every word. “Like this? After all these years, here, at conference?  You try this emotional blackmail on me?  That’s shitty, Poland—”

“I’m not—I’m sorry— _please_ —”

“Get off of me.”

And Poland did.  Suddenly and meekly and without another word.

“—come back—”  Lithuania was struck by a stabbing, crippling terror that Poland would run from the room and be gone forever.  “Come back.  Come back.  Come here, and let me hold you.”

He caught a moment’s glimpse of Poland’s face, brimful of centuries of hopes and fears, before they collapsed into each others’ arms.

Poland sobbed.  “Liet.”

They were both crying.  It was very unprofessional all round.

“Don’t let go,” Lithuania whispered.  “Don’t ever let go.”

Someone behind him started whistling and clapping.

“…People are looking at us, aren’t they?” Lithuania murmured.

“Yep.”

“That’s Hungary, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Poland looked up over Lithuania’s shoulder to give her a wink.  “Mind?  We can go someplace else.”

Lithuania wasn’t ready to be out of Poland’s arms just yet.

“It’s okay.  Just,” he added, under the noise of now several clapping, cheering nations, “can you not jump at me and say things like that, please? I don’t like it.  And I’m still a bit nervous.” 

“Yeah, of course. I wasn’t thinking.”

Lithuania nodded. He hugged Poland tighter, not trusting himself to look in his face.

“You weren’t kidding about never letting go, hey?” Poland said with a little laugh.  “That’s cool, I could deal with this: we take turns walking forwards, and maybe we get a swivel chair in meetings…  Hey… Liet… Like, shoot me down if this is moving too fast, but if you ever want to give that bed-sharing thing another try?  ‘Cos, you know, stuff happened and, well, I’m pretty much an expert at sharing now.  I’m a big fan—when it’s my choice.  I can share a tiny blanket with, like, eight people.  That’s not so great.  Anyway.  What… what do you think?”

Lithuania had his nose pressed into Poland’s shoulder, so he couldn’t see the animation of Poland’s face. But he could imagine it, bright from within, with hope chasing out the hauntings.

“Yeah. Yeah, why not.  I’d like that.”

“Awesome.”

“Oh!” Lithuania cried. “Your nice smart suit… I’m getting it all creased up.”

“Yours too.  Don’t care.” 

“In that case…” Lithuania loosened his grasp and grinned.  “Want to go climb something?” 

**Author's Note:**

> Because of the circumstances of writing this, I didn’t really do any new research or fact checking, instead relying on what I already basically had. Which I think worked out basically fine for a broad-strokes story like this _except_ … I’m really not sure you can climb around any of the towers of Wawel Castle like Poland does XD Maybe you could in 1386? Or maybe, artistic license? ^.^ Otherwise I just threw all the thoughts and feelings I had lying around for these two at this, ahh. And, hey, look, I wrote that OTP without necessarily being sexual or romantic story (...not that you _can't_ interpret it that way though...) that I'd wanted to write.
> 
> The making-Jogaila-take-a-bath-to-prove-his-normal-humanness story though! (which [a few people have theorised](http://hetalia-kink.dreamwidth.org/73318.html?thread=473955174#cmt473955174) might be where Poland got his strange request) is referenced in James Michener’s novel Poland, and also sort of [here](http://sydneysadowski.com/other/princess-jadwiga-king-of-poland) and [here](http://gallowglass.org/jadwiga/SCA/slavic/jadwiga.wawel.html), but I don’t have a proper source on it.
> 
> For the rest, I’ve been kinda vague on dates but we basically have, from Hetalia or history or both: their meeting to negotiate the Jadwiga/Jogaila marriage, Battle of Grunwald, tensions in the Commonwealth (Poland hogging the blankets), Partitions… then we kind of zoom past 1918/While You Were Gone and the Polish-Lithuanian war to pre-WW2 Lithuania being conflicted about contacting Poland, and the ending is early 1990s.


End file.
